


Oxytocin and Orange Juice

by soregrettable



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Daddy Kink, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-TWS, Touch-Starved, feelings and eventual filth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 21:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7861903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soregrettable/pseuds/soregrettable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>God damn Steve Rogers, Captain Stoic, America’s Boy Scout. He’d clammed up into Captain Responsible to “support Sergeant Barnes’ reintegration.” Four months of treating Bucky gingerly and not wanting to crowd him, afraid he might do some damage.</p><p>Bucky hates it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oxytocin and Orange Juice

God damn Steve Rogers, Captain Stoic, America’s Boy Scout. It hadn’t been like this when Bucky first showed up, grimy and mistrustful, in Steve’s apartment -- Steve was too grateful, too relieved to be guarded. But once reality set in, he’d clammed up into Captain Responsible, there to “support Sergeant Barnes’ reintegration.” Four months of treating him gingerly and not wanting to crowd Bucky, afraid he might do some damage.

Bucky hates it.

“You missed our run this morning.” Steve says cautiously, over Superhero Breakfast: toast, bacon, orange juice, and the horrible protein scramble that Steve insists on eating. Bucky chokes it down without complaint.

“I was at the gym,” Bucky replies shortly. Lifting weights, doing laps in the pool when it’s too early and there’s no-one else around. It’s easier than seeing all those people.

“Thanks for stopping in at Nat’s party last night,” Steve ventures, trying again. “It meant a lot to me.”

“I said I’d come.” Bucky shrugs, a little too casually. Steve had looked almost pleading when he asked, and Bucky, of course, had given in. He’d showed up two hours late, said hello to Natasha (who is terrifying and the only other person there that Bucky likes), and then stood in the corner glowering at everyone. Stark, because he is a dick, had swaggered up to Bucky and thrown his arm around him and dragged him over to Steve, who had looked radiant at the sight of him.

That part had been worth it.

Steve looks a little wounded at this curt treatment, and Bucky relents. “It was - fun.” he offers. Steve, pleased at this olive branch, raises an eyebrow. “Not fun,” Bucky admits with a quirk of his lips. “But it was okay. Okay is good, right?”

“Yeah, Buck.” Steve smiles back, the worry almost receding from his face. “Okay is good.”

There’s a silence filled by the last scrapes of cutlery on plates. The sun streams in onto the kitchen island between them.

“Got to go, Buck,” Steve says, shifting off the stool and hoisting his shoulder bag, “duty calls.” He carries his plate to the sink, maintaining a careful distance from Bucky. It means he has to fully extend his arm to set the plate down, and Bucky almost laughs. It’s ridiculous, a big strong man like Steve creeping around Bucky as though he might explode.

“Thanks, Steve,” Bucky says, and with a flash of malice he takes a too-large step into Steve’s personal space. “That’s real nice of you.”

He expects Steve to jerk back and is all set to deliver a sarcastic remark, but Steve stays right where he is, staring right into Bucky’s face. “No problem, Buck,” he says deliberately, not moving. Steve knows exactly what Bucky is doing, and isn’t going to let him get away with it. 

Bucky turns away and starts filling the sink and sudsing the dishes. He’s not sure what to feel.

Steve straightens slowly, and all that concern comes spilling back over his face. “I’ll be home by six.” He pauses. “I called Nat. She’ll be along this afternoon.”

The door closes behind Steve and Bucky feels like breaking a plate.

\-----

It’s petty, butting up against Steve’s boundaries like that, and Bucky ought to know better. He knows that Steve’s only doing it because he’s worried that Bucky might feel trapped and to make sure that he has enough space. But every moment feels like a rejection, and at least this way, Bucky might someday get a reaction. Steve might lose his cool and say something real.

The silence in their apartment seems less heavy when Bucky’s the only one in it, so he plays a little game with himself where he tries to do normal things while making as little noise as possible. They’ve got a perfectly good dishwasher (a ridiculously fancy dishwasher, this is Stark’s tower, he probably designed it himself), but Bucky slowly, quietly washes the plates anyway. Steve gave up reminding him about it after week three, baffled at Bucky’s insistence. Rhythm is good. Cleaning is good. If you take care of something, it’s yours. This is Bucky’s place too, or so he reminds himself every morning after breakfast, up to his elbows in suds and moving at a glacial pace. 

Despite Steve’s coaxing, Bucky’s life is quiet and contained. He mostly stays within the confines of the tower, shuttling between the kitchen and punishing workouts at the gym. He can’t lift weights all day, though, and even Bucky gets bored of pacing their apartment. So he reads a lot, history mostly, trying to catch up on what he’s missed. He does the dishes, watches Netflix, sometimes he cooks.

People are hard. Bucky doesn’t like being in large groups -- he’s used to either hiding in the shadows or brutally murdering people, neither of which is encouraged here. All those people make him think about barriers, exits, and obstacles between him and his target. He doesn’t have targets anymore, though. 

He wouldn’t say so to Steve (who would get that damned concerned look again, and ask him to _talk about it_ ), but Bucky feels the loss. He still finds himself trying to divide people into categories: handlers, targets, or irrelevant. It’s simple, three categories, and you knew what to do about each of them. But as Steve keeps telling him, the rest of the world isn’t like that. “You’ve got to see that, Buck. Get to know people. Find out what you like and don’t like.” Well, currently Bucky likes the gym. And orange juice. And being alone.

Sometimes, if he’s had a good week and no panic attacks in a while, he’ll go outside, baseball cap pulled low and a hoodie hiding his arm -- like he used to do when he was even more broken, before coming back to Steve. He likes galleries and museums, where he can be around people but not with them. He’ll close his eyes and sit there for as long as he can stand it, gritting his teeth and making himself stay a little longer each time. Eventually the violence creeps up in him, the urge to surge forward in pursuit of some nameless goal. Then he has to go home and sit quiet for a while, until he calms down.

He always makes sure he’s back before Steve gets in. Even when Bucky’s at his pettiest, he still gravitates to Steve.

Everybody else does, too. Other people feel it: the weird supernatural pull that Steve has, the brightness that brings others to him. Stark is an egotistical genius, Banner is a monster with control issues, Natasha doesn’t play well with others, and Thor is a literal god -- but when they need a leader, they all look instinctively to Steve.

Bucky resents having to share Steve with them. _I knew him first_ , Bucky wants to say, _I loved him better._ But in this present, the Avengers know Steve better than he does. Steve has an easy camaraderie with them that disappears when Bucky’s in the room. The feeling is small and selfish, and Bucky’s angry at himself for it: Stevie deserves all that confidence, and he uses it to save the world.

The doorbell rings, and Bucky’s jerked out of his brooding. Natasha Romanov stands there, looking generally unimpressed by Bucky. “Hello stranger. You’re looking awfully tall, dark, and surly today. You gonna let me in?”

Bucky shuffles backward and she glides inside, all in black and looking, as usual, completely together. “Shoes off,” Bucky reminds her, and she pulls off her heels with a grimace. “You’re the only person in the building who insists on this,” she grumbles, but Bucky knows she’s just pissed about losing the extra few inches of height. 

He grins. “Being barefoot is comfy.”

“And quieter.” She raises an eyebrow. “Easier to sneak around in the dark,” Bucky shrugs. It’s true.

“Nice jeans,” Natasha remarks approvingly as she sways past him, letting him see her eyes flick over him. One stone-cold Soviet fox to another.

“Steve gave them to me.” Bucky looks down. They’re black and a little bit stretchy, comfortable and easy to move in, and he thinks they look nice. They’d shown up in his drawer one day with a couple of new shirts. A thought occurs to him. “Did you pick them out?”

Natasha snorts. “As if Steve would let anyone else pick out his presents to you.” Whatever that means.

“Speaking of which.” Bucky pulls a bag of beans out of the cupboard and rattles it. “Coffee?” “Ooh, yes please.” She smiles. “He got you the nice stuff. Fair trade, from the place that Stark gets his beans.” Bucky shrugs and fills up the French press.

“So what are we doing today?” the redhead asks, plopping onto the couch. Natasha’s the only one who doesn’t treat Bucky like a time bomb, though Bucky knows she’s scrutinizing him just as closely as everyone else. Natasha went through -- similar experiences. He’s pretty sure she’s reporting back to Steve, but she’s good company, and he thinks she might genuinely like him.

He sets the press on the table and then perches on a chair across the room, back to a wall, facing the door -- old habits die hard. (The floor-to-ceiling windows make Bucky edgy, even though Stark insists they’re not a risk.) “You’re the one who came to me.”

“Steve told me you were bored.” That quick, sharp look. “Are you?”

Bucky ticks off his fingers. “Went to the gym, ate breakfast, washed the dishes, then stared at a wall for a while. And we’re out of orange juice.”

“Again?” She smirks at Bucky’s orange juice addiction. (It’s not his fault. They didn’t have this stuff when he was young. Bucky is still amazed that you can get something so delicious at any bodega.) “You’ve really adjusted well to all this capitalist decadence.” Bucky scowls - reminders of the Red Room are bad, Steve knows, but Natasha doesn’t flinch. In fact she somehow looks even less impressed than before, so Bucky’s glare was wasted. 

Natasha thinks for a minute. “Good. That’s today’s activity. You and me are going grocery shopping, Barnes.”

Bucky stares at her. “No. That’s - no. That’s a bad idea.”

“Okay.” She tosses her red curls in mock indifference. “But if you don’t come with me, I’ll tell JARVIS not to order you any OJ unless you go get it yourself.”

This is a low blow. Steve would never deny Bucky orange juice like this. Bucky bets that if he asked, Steve would deal with it… and then Bucky would have to explain to Steve why he had to deal with it. And Steve would be so, so concerned.

“I really don’t want to go, Natasha.” he says quietly. 

Natasha nods at him, joking mood gone. They both know that this is a risk. Bucky might have a flashback or a panic attack, or he might just storm back to the apartment and not leave it for days. “I know. But we have to start somewhere.” She smiles a little. “And you’ll get more orange juice out of it.”

Bucky concedes that this is an important point.

\-----

Bucky’s finding it helpful to think of this as a mission. Mission: obtain orange juice. There, he has an objective. Parameters include: no stealing things; no hurting civilians; do whatever Natasha says. O-kay. He could do this.

“You’re thinking about this like a mission, aren’t you.” Natasha observes casually, scanning the aisle. She’s walking a little ahead of him, making him push the cart (obviously) and loading it up with lots of things that Bucky doesn’t care about. After years of military rations, Bucky is nearly indifferent to taste. Orange juice was a revelation.

“Yes,” he admits, a little defensive. Natasha has a way of doing that, anticipating his thought patterns and drawing his attention to them. “Is that so bad?”

Natasha shrugs. “Not really. But if you don’t stop now, you never will.”

“Did you?” Bucky challenges. “Nope,” she responds. “But I never wanted to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She shrugs again and picks up a couple of boxes, comparing them. Natasha also has a way of being annoyingly cryptic and then acting superior about it, like she’s just delivered a great insight that Bucky’s too dense to pick up. “Uuugh!” Bucky groans at her. She smiles at the boxes but doesn’t reply.

Bucky slouches over the handlebar of the cart, shouldering his hoodie farther around his face. He’s an edgy motherfucker these days. He doesn’t like the harsh fluorescent lights or the constant background hum of the freezers. Things like this never bothered him when he was the Soldier, but now that he’s “recovering”, everything seems worse. More difficult. He doesn’t understand how he can somehow be weaker and more vulnerable than the entity he’s trying to suppress. 

Natasha takes pity on him and tosses one of the boxes into the cart. “Two more aisles until we get to your favourite part.”

“Great. Then we can go.” Still, Bucky is cautiously prepared to admit that Natasha may not have been totally wrong. The grocery store certainly hasn’t been fun, but Natasha has done most of the work -- he’s just had to stay quiet and follow her around. And Bucky has suggested, with studied offhandedness, a few things that maybe Steve might like but wouldn’t buy for himself. Steve still tsk’d at the price of good beef (“Chuck has just as much protein as sirloin, Buck”) but after living through the 30s, Steve deserves the best that money could buy. Maybe Bucky will cook it for dinner and Steve will get that little surprised pleased look on his face again.

They’re rounding the corner to nirvana. Bucky can actually see the damn Tropicana boxes when it all goes to shit.

The disembodied shriek rakes through Bucky. All of a sudden he’s jagged and raw and it won’t stop, that awful noise, so horribly familiar. There’s two halves of him peeling apart, two instincts vying for control. One says crouch and cover his ears and hope to God it ends. The other says, _Someone messed up and left a witness._

Can’t perform a threat assessment when you’re too busy trying to act normal, where is his weapon, _where is his weapon_ \- No. It’s just a baby. Not a casualty. Not a target. Just a screaming kid that won’t shut up! Stop it. Get it together!

He wheels around, almost overbalancing (his usual grace deserting him), arms swinging wide to steady himself, and the weight of his metal hand swipes a row of jars off of the shelves. “Shit!” He turns and then -

Bucky stops, staring down at the mess of smashed pasta sauce jars. Sparkling glass and splotches coat the floor, and even though it’s a different colour and a different texture and this is a supermarket at midday, all Bucky sees is a spray of red, and he feels _cold._

“Barnes -” Natasha reaches for his arm (the metal one that HYDRA made) but he turns on her like an animal. “Don’t touch me!” She backs the hell off. Knows what’s good for her, Bucky thinks darkly, and immediately hates himself for the thought. “Don’t follow,” he rasps, then turns and strides out of the supermarket, almost ignoring the gasps and fearful looks. His stride lengthens and then he’s very nearly running into the tower, into the elevator, back home.

Bucky slams the door and stumbles into the living room, not even bothering to hit the lights. He’s almost crying in frustration. Stupid, stupid! Of course he’d crack, of course the ordinary world wasn’t meant for him. The spectre of the Soldier was there, always waiting for Bucky to think he could be normal. Always waiting for him to slip up.

His back hits the wall (facing the door) and he skids down until he’s hit the floor. The lights are out and evening is coming on outside, but better to conceal himself, he knows about hiding in the dark. Bucky bends his head and buries his hands in his hair and tries not to think. All he can feel is the sickening clench of guilt and fear in his stomach. 

Steve. Steve will feel so awful. Bucky’s torn between being frantic that Steve will be unhappy and a longing to smack that worried look right off his face. There’s no way he’ll open up to Bucky now.

When the door finally clicks open and the kitchen light flicks on, Bucky doesn’t move. He hears Steve rustling for a moment, and then into the silence there’s a soft thunk. Bucky’s eyes flick up cautiously through the curtain of his hair. There are two cartons of orange juice sitting on the counter, and behind them, Steve is smiling.

“I heard you went to the grocery store today. Nat told me. I’m really proud of you.”

“Yeah?” Bucky says, voice rough, then clears his throat. “Did she tell ya that I almost lost it, smashed a bunch of stuff, then ran like a bat out of hell?”

“Yup.” Steve shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”

Bucky shakes his head in disbelief. “Steve, I messed up. I could’ve hurt somebody. This is why I don’t - “ Steve cuts him off. “Bucky. You tried. You took a step. You went out there, and the worst that happened was a few broken jars.” Steve stops for a moment, and Bucky raises his head the rest of the way.

Steve’s got his head tilted to one side, gazing at Bucky with this goofy fond look on his face, looking like he could do this all day. Bucky feels a strange rush of relief and confusion and something else, a little warmth and tightness in his chest that he doesn’t understand, staring into those blue eyes. Steve huffs a little but in a pleased sort of way, and slowly it sinks home that Steve is really, genuinely not upset. “Bucky, I’m so proud of you.”

And that makes the tiny burst of warmth inside Bucky rise up and wash over him like a wave.

Steve holds up the orange juice. “I got the fancy fresh-squeezed stuff. Want some?”

They sit across from each other at the kitchen island. Bucky mainlines an entire carton of orange juice right there, and Steve talks soothingly and tells Bucky about his day. Bucky’s breathing slowly calms, and Steve doesn’t stop smiling, and it almost feels normal. Sure, Steve still keeps his regulation distance of at least two feet away from Bucky at all times, but the crinkle of worry is almost smoothed from his brow. And he literally never stops smiling.

Bucky felt awful just twenty minutes ago, but now he feels like maybe he did something right.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic of any length, so comments are love. Thanks to the lovely @moonklutz for betaing! It's not canon-compliant post TWS because I had philosophical differences with the ending of Civil War. If you've got typos or tag suggestions, please pass them along!


End file.
